Erik Dietrich – The Polyglot’s Dilemma:

“The idealists report to upper management, which consists entirely of opportunists. The opportunists, the organization’s real strategic players, manage everyone. […] They get idealists (journeyman and regular) to believe that the company’s interests mirror their own. And they get them to force that culture on pragmatists who don’t buy it, but don’t fight it.

[…] In the current world of software development, learning multiple languages and notching more and more techs makes for good business. But it makes for good business in a perpetual subordinate, journeyman idealist context. […] You’ve never figured out how to solve anyone’s actual business problems — you’ve only figured out how to make yourself a perpetually sharp saw for others to use.

[…] I encourage you to stop notching languages and frameworks as part of a Sisyphean spring against the motion of the treadmill. Instead, take a critical look at what your company has you doing, and start trying to think in terms of the business problems you solve for them instead of the languages that you know.

[…] It will make you expert in an area and give you a framework for solving, rather than transforming problems. Experts have an easier time getting both contract and fulltime gigs, and they can also move fluidly into consultative or managerial roles.”